SCENE FOUR:
For the fourth week of the Intruder was spent mostly working on the nose issue. First I sanded down the fuselage side down a little bit as close as I could to match the nose. I then taped the windscreen with kapton tape as the putty does not adhere to the tape very well. I tacked the windscreen down with some Elmer’s glue to hold it in place and I applied the putty. Once the putty had dried I carefully remove the windscreen and wet sanded the putty down. I had to add a little more putty occasionally to aid in blending the nose to the fuselage. The kit has a small fret of photo etch which included the hinge brace for lifting the nose for access to the radar. This was attached and I then taped off the aircraft nose, flaps and rudder so these could be sprayed with the white base coat. I used one layer of Tamiya white primer then Vallejo matte white for two coats.
Once dry I removed the tape and had a slight accident. The tape pulled the ejection seat upper handles. I will re-attach these later after I spray the base coat on the fuselage. While the putty was drying I was able to assemble the Eduard TER’s that will be used. The cables were molded on but they were very fragile and broke easily when attempting to trim the inside of the loop. I decided to remove them and use some wire instead. I adjusted the mounts for these to match the mounting holes on the aircraft. The Eduard set has photo etch details for the bottom of the rack mounts as well. I also built up the Flying Leathernecks resin MK-83 bombs. I also added photo etch details to the landing gear doors and had to fill in some mold marks. I still need to add the panel lines around the nose and some rivet details on the fuselage side after all the putty and sanding. I will be making the boarding ladders in the down position and it looks like these will need some work as well. There are mold marks that need to be filled and then there is a lot of photo etch details that need to be added to the them. I am hoping to get all these little details completed so I can start base coating the fuselage.
I have been reviewing the movie multiple times. The paint scheme is kind of weird. Normally the Viet Nam era aircraft were gull grey top and white underside. The movie aircraft was painted light ghost grey with a dark ghost grey around the cockpit and spine. The flaps were only painted white on top. The nose, rudder, rear stabilizers, and topside flaps were all painted white. The only other issue is in the movie they note they are using the 1000lbs bombs and the flight scenes show them with the normal free-fall tails on the aircraft. But the scenes where the bombs drop they are using the MK-82 snake eye tails. I will be using the free fall tails as shown on the loaded aircraft in flight.
You can see many more photos and details from the start in my build log at: https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-48-a-6a-intruder-flight-of-the-intruder/
7 attached images. Click to enlarge.
